{"book":"adl0957","page":214,"text":"167\n\nhim, and energetically took in hand the development and\nreform—in fact, one may say the foundation anew of Afghanistan.\nThe constitutional reforms introduced by the King must be\nregarded as his most praiseworthy act, a measure by which he\nparted with his autocratic powers, and officially transferred them\nto the representatives of the people. The Afghan Government,\nuntil the reign of King Nadir Shah, was autocratic. The King\nwas the fountain-head of all power, and all orders relating to\nthe administration of the State emanated from him. The\nMinisters were practically the lieutenants of the king and in\nhis name wielded the full authority of the government. Under\nKing Nadir Shah, however, the Government gave way to con-\nstitutionalism. Two Houses of Parliament, a House of\nRepresentatives and a House of Elders were set up to look\nafter the affairs of the country and to frame laws.\n\nUnfortunately, the reign of this benign and wise King was\ncut short by his assassination on November 8, 1933.\n\nKing Mohammad Zahir Shah:\n\nH.M. King Mohammad Zahir Shah, the only surviving\nson of the late King Mohammad Nadir Shah, peacefully suc-\nceeded his father on the throne, with the title of \"Almutawakkal-\nAllallah\" (He who puts his trust in the Lord).\n\nHis Majesty was born in Kabul on Monday, October 15,\n1914, so he was only 19 when he ascended the throne. He is\nthe first Afghan King who has been educated in a European\ncountry. On the completion of his elementary education, he\naccompanied his illustrious father to France in 1924 and stayed\nthere for six years. He studied at Lycee Janson de Sailly and\nthen at Lycee Michelet and the College de Montpellier.\n\nReturning to Afghanistan in 1930, he attended the","chars":1716,"image":"https://storage.googleapis.com/adl-page-images/adl0957/00214.jpg","first_page":1,"last_page":377,"title":"new guide to Afghanistan","permalink":"https://afghanpress.org/book/adl0957/214","canvas":"https://afghanpress.org/iiif/adl0957/canvas/214","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/books/adl0957/","source_pdf":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/pdf/adl0957_download.pdf","rights":{"image":{"statement":"Public domain. NYU states: \"All works presented on this website are, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.\"","uri":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/","holder":"New York University Libraries","source":"https://afghanistandl.nyu.edu/about.html","delivery":"Images are served from a copy mirrored by this project, not from NYU's servers, under the reproduction terms above.","endorsement":"This is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by New York University."},"text":{"statement":"Machine-generated transcription, dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0. No warranty of accuracy: see the provenance block on every page.","uri":"https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/","holder":"Steps Ventures"}},"provenance":{"text_produced_by":"gemini-3.1-pro-preview","thinking_level":"low","read_completed":"2026-08-09","per_page_confidence":null,"per_page_confidence_note":"Not recorded during the corpus run. No calibrated per-page score exists, and none is estimated here.","human_reviewed":false,"accuracy_context":"Roughly two thirds of characters agree with a modern printed edition of the same text. Much of the disagreement is editorial, not misreading. Treat the transcription as a finding aid and read the page image before quoting.","primary_source":"The page image. The text is an index into it."}}